Last Carr Recruits

Hard to believe, but this team still had players recruited by Carr. Kenny Demens, Brandon Moore, and Elliot Mealer are the final holdovers. Seems like decades ago that Carr was the coach; it's hard to believe he recruited those guys.

Edit: So those 3 were the last that made their verbal commitment under Carr.
- Will Campbell commited under Carr, decommitted, then recommitted under Rodriguez.
- JT Floyd was offered by Carr and was supposedly a silent commit to Carr's Michigan.
- Marvin Robinson was offered by Carr

I'm sure Carr had a hand in at least some part of the recruiting process for a handful of other players on the team, but ultimately the players above are the last ones to commit while expecting to play under Carr.

Question about Jackson: Why are fans demanding Borges' head instead of his? Given Jackson's past claims, he's either utterly incapable of evaluating talent, or he's the worst RB coach ever. Either way, it seems like the ineptitude of Fitz, Smith, et al should be on Jackson, not Borges.

Worst RB coach ever? Tell that to Tyrone Wheatley, Tim Biakabutuka, Anthony Thomas, Chris Perry, Mike Hart, and many, many more that were very successful under him. Jackson may be a fan of hyperbole, but he is also a coach that has been responsible for getting many good RBs and players to Michigan and coaching them up when they get here.

But hey, coaching four different RBs that got over 1500 yards rushing in a season must mean you're the worst coach ever. Got it.

But is he as effective a coach as he was 17 years ago? How many coaches can remain at a job for that long and not begin to decline?

It seems like we've had a lack of tailback depth for several years now. Hart never really had much of a backup during his four years and since his graduation, the position has generally been weak. How long does Jackson get to keep living off the legends of guys who played 10-20 years ago?

Michigan has done a poor job of recruiting running backs in recent years. They used to get one of the top few running backs in the country - Perry, Thomas, Wheatley, etc. Now that's not the case, for whatever reason. And the Hart "legend" ended in 2007, so it hasn't been 10-20 years.

Of course RR shows up as recruiting the best players for next season. Who else was recruiting our senior and juniors? All of Lloyd's players have graduated and Hoke's are still underclassman.

And "best" compared to who? How does the RR senior class compare to Bama or Ohio? Meyer has a pretty blue chip senior and junior recruiting class to work with next year for the Game. Hoke is still trying to piece together an O-line.

To be fair, our senior classes haven't compared too well to OSU since 2001 and how many teams boast upperclassmen like Bama in recent years? Our last really good senior class was 2007. So I think that goes on both RR and LC.

While he may have bunched up his undies a bit, the sentiment is accurate. RR recruited all of the players who will be SR, JR and RS SO, so of course his recruits will make up the bulk of our "best" players. My guess is that in two or three years we'll look back at the best RR players as being relatively weak in comparison to the best Hoke players.

If I counted correctly, from the 2009 and 2010 classes at least, there are still 22 players from those classes on the roster as it looks on MGoBlue right now (just printed it). There are four players - Countess, Hollowell, Morgan and Beyer, who had committed to the class of 2011 before Rodriguez was let go.

What's stunning about this coaching staff's recruiting success isn't that they've brought in highly rated players. Every Michigan coaching staff will do that. It's that they put together top 5 or top 10 classes at a time when the program looked like it was a directionless mess (staring at some rebuilding/tinkering years) and no one knew what to expect from Hoke as coach. That 2012 class was a remarkable feat.

I agree on the whole that Hoke and company miraculously changed the world that was Michigan football in terms of recruiting, but I think you are mixing our ontology as onlookers with recruits' ontology. While we held onto the reality that the program was "a directionless mess" during and after the RR -> Hoke transition, Hoke and company had already created a different world inside Schembechler Hall (which extended out into the recruiting trail). Our reality was historical, yet we didnt know it. But recruits did. The world recruits saw was full of potential and opportunity built on quality management, leadership, and relationships, while the world we saw was still informed and structured by the past. Schembechler Hall had already evolved into a new species, while we were still holding onto a picture of a devolving species, and thus were less evolved ourselves.

On second thought, I think we completely agree, and I'm just adding some substance to your comment. In short, you are right - what was micaculous was that Hoke and co were able to build the new world order based on mere potential.